


Stitched in Place

by emungere



Series: Ladders [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Domestic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 05:59:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2611019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will leaned in and kissed him, as if that were the solution to everything. The longer he stayed pressed close, mouth warm against Hannibal’s and <em>still smiling</em>, the more viable his argument seemed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stitched in Place

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to fitofpique for the beta! <3

A shadow passed over Hannibal, cooling his hand where it lay on the open book in his lap.

“Hannibal? You awake?”

“You’re bleeding. I can smell it.” 

“Yeah. If you open your eyes, you can see it too.” 

Hannibal did, just in time to catch a drop of blood in his palm before it could stain page twenty four of Montaigne's essays. He set the book aside and took Will’s arm to tug him closer. 

“What did you do?” 

“Slipped on the roof. Caught it on the flashing. Do I need stitches?” 

The slice stretched half the length of his forearm, but it wasn’t deep. The bleeding was slowing already. “No, I don’t believe so. Come inside. I’ll clean it for you.” 

Will could easily see to it himself. Hannibal paused and gave him a chance to say so. Will only looked at him, waiting. 

Hannibal led him into their house. The kitchen had been cleared out, awaiting delivery of more modern appliances and the installation of a wood fired oven. No lighting yet. He left the door open, both for the sun and the breeze. 

Will hissed as the water hit his skin. “Cold.” 

“I’d think you’d be glad of it after working in the sun all day.” 

“I don’t mind the heat.” 

“All the same—"

“We don’t need air conditioning. It won’t kill you to sweat a little.”

Hannibal sighed and let it go, again. Perhaps at a more auspicious moment. For now, he was unwilling to start that particular argument up again. He moderated the chill of the water and cleaned the slice in Will’s arm. 

Will watched him and said nothing. Despite his objection to the temperature of the water, he didn’t appear to notice the sting of the soap. His eyes stayed steady on Hannibal’s face, more or less at the level of his chin. 

“Did you think I was going to lick the blood off?” Hannibal asked. 

“I wouldn’t have stopped you.” 

“I am still a doctor.” 

A faint smile pulled at Will’s mouth. “Yeah.” 

“Don’t.” 

“Don’t what?” 

“You know very well what.” 

Will leaned in and kissed him, as if that were the solution to everything. The longer he stayed pressed close, mouth warm against Hannibal’s and _still smiling_ , the more viable his argument seemed. 

“You’re sweet,” Will said in his ear.

“That's an absurd statement.” 

“I am still a doctor,” Will said, matching both his tone and accent almost perfectly, the faintest mocking slant to the words. 

“I am." 

“I'm pretty sure you've been defrocked, or whatever they do to doctors when they turn out to have violated the Hippocratic oath in the most theatrical way possible. Did you want to lick it off?” 

“I wasn’t thinking of it. Only of treating the wound.” 

“Why?” 

Hannibal pulled his medical kit down from the shelf in the pantry where it had lived since Will started work on the house. “Decades of medical experience,” he said. 

“It’s not just that.”

“Isn’t it?” 

“You look different when you’re patching me up. Different from how you look with other people. More cautious.” 

Hannibal laid the bandage into place and paused, fingers smoothing over the tape. “I have shattered your trust in so many places. But here it remains whole. You place your physical wounds into my hands so fearlessly. I wouldn’t wish to change that.” 

Will tilted his head to one side and watched him work, eyes on his hands, flicking up briefly to his face and away again. "Do you actually believe that now? That you did something wrong? Is this an admission of guilt or just an acknowledgement of my point of view?"

Hannibal paused. Will knew him too intimately now for half-truths. "I regret what I did in some ways because it has altered your reactions to me. In others, I believe your struggle against me has externalized much of your conflict and given it a focus. You are no longer eating yourself alive, and for that I am glad." 

Will let out a breath of laughter. "You regret the parts that inconvenience you. I'm shocked."

"Can most people say otherwise about their regrets?"

Will shook his head, maybe in agreement, maybe not. "You'd rather have me fight you than fight myself?" he said. 

"As I've told you before, you're never boring." 

"I never stop pushing at you." 

"Do you regret that?" 

"I feel bad about it sometimes."

Hannibal taped a bandage in place and smoothed his hand over it to curl around Will's forearm. "You could do much worse to me, and I would not object," he said. 

He could see the memory resurface in Will's eyes: the night of their reunion, Hannibal's invitation to hurt him, Will's adamant refusal. 

"I'd accuse you of using me to punish yourself," Will said slowly, "but that seems unlikely." 

"There is nothing for which I feel I deserve punishment." 

"Nothing?" 

Hannibal paused to examine the morass of his emotions, seething like a tar pit at a safe distance from the core of his mind. A bubble popped, and he heard Will's screams at the abandoned asylum, the sound of something driven out of humanity entirely and cast up on a shore of blood and broken glass and fear. 

"The asylum. Perhaps."

"You apologized for that." 

"Is that enough?"

"It's enough for me. If it's not about punishment, then what?"

"The experience of you, unrestrained. I see glimpses. You are always breathtaking."

Will's cheeks went a little pink, which would never stop being entrancing. Hannibal pulled him close and pressed his lips there to feel the heat of blood under his skin. 

"We'll talk about it," Will said. "When I get back from DC." 

"I look forward to it." 

*

That night, they ate trout with browned butter and pomegranate seeds, wilted wild mustard greens that Will had picked in the field behind the new house, and the first of the autumn chanterelles. They spoke of Paris and New Orleans, of pipes for the house and the pipe organ in the chapel of Hannibal’s boarding school, of the decomposing cat Will had found in the attic. In French, always, at the dinner table. Will insisted.

"Maybe we’ll be haunted," Will said. 

"You intend to bury it." 

Will shrugged. "What else am I going to do with it?" 

"I would put it in the trash."

"You’d have someone else put it in the trash, and I didn’t ask what _you’d_ do with it." 

"You’re improving. You wouldn’t have had the grammar for that three weeks ago." 

"I still feel like I’m making sentences out of building blocks. Checking to make sure everything fits together and won’t fall down."

"Fluency will come in time." 

"Just in language or in everything?"

"We live the lives we choose, and we choose the lives we live. Repetition and familiarity make anything seem natural." 

*

After the lights were off, Will opened the bedroom windows and stood looking out into the dark. Hannibal watched him from the bed. The buzz of nocturnal insects crept into the room. The sweet, heavy scent of decaying foliage followed: the first exhalation of autumn. 

Will returned to the bed and pushed the covers back. He pulled at Hannibal's pajamas until he had him bared to the night air. His hands moved over the varied surfaces of Hannibal’s body, breastbone and stomach, thighs and hips. His tongue curled around the head of Hannibal's cock. 

Hannibal fisted a hand in Will’s t-shirt. "Take this off. Let me touch you." 

Will didn’t reply, didn’t even seem to hear him. He lay between Hannibal’s thighs and stroked his skin and sucked him, languorous, eyes half closed. Hannibal stroked Will’s hair and touched his warm cheeks, flushed with desire now instead of embarrassed pleasure at Hannibal’s regard. Or maybe a little of both. He wound Will's curls around his fingers and pulled gently and watched them spring back into shape when he released them. 

His breath grew heavier in his chest as Will sucked harder, took him deeper. Will reached up to pinch and pluck at his nipples. Hannibal licked his lips and turned his head away, reached up to grasp the bedframe. Will opened his mouth wider, took him down until his lips touched the base, and Hannibal’s hands clenched. 

Will backed off again, licked at the head, ran his nails lightly over Hannibal’s ribs. He looked up through his lashes, expression solemn, serious in the way he had when he was working something out in his head. Hannibal could feel himself starting to fray. When they did this, they came apart together. Doing it alone, pinned by Will’s calm gaze, both fueled the heat inside him and made him fight against it. 

Will pushed him harder, head bobbing, tongue working, light graze of teeth along the shaft. Hannibal hid his face against his own arm, hid from Will as he never had from God. He could hear his breath come in soft, quick pants. The thud of his heart moved his chest. Will sucked him steadily, swallowed him down every few seconds, smiled around his mouthful when Hannibal’s cock jerked in his throat. 

Heat gathered around them, almost visible in the humid air. Streamers of it wrapped around Hannibal’s limbs and held him in place. He closed his eyes and gave in, to Will, to his body, to the still, close night. 

He clutched the bedframe and clenched his teeth and let his hips buck up the way they wanted to. He watched his dissolution as if from a distance. Soon, there was only Will’s mouth and his own desperation, thrusts aborted by Will’s tight grip, seeking release. 

When he came, he said Will’s name, called for him as if he were a thousand miles away, beyond hope or memory. Will held him through it. He wound his arms around Hannibal's waist, mouth gentling until he pulled back entirely and rested his head on Hannibal’s stomach. 

Sweat cooled on their bodies. Hannibal tugged at Will’s shoulder until he moved up enough to allow Hannibal to kiss him, to taste himself in Will’s mouth and breathe against his neck. The scent of both of them, together, arousal and the lingering remnants of their day, the blood from the cut on Will’s arm and under his skin. 

"It’s raining," Will said. 

Hannibal felt he had lost the building blocks of all his languages in the past few minutes. He didn’t try to reply. 

"Come on," Will said, and pulled at him. He pressed clothes into Hannibal's arms and ignored the question in his eyes. They dressed, and Will took his hand. "The house," he said. "I want to check the roof. It’s the first time it’s rained since I finished it." He hesitated. "You don’t have to come." 

Hannibal held his hand more tightly. Will smiled, small and quiet, wholly and solely for him. 

They put the top up on the Aston Martin and drove surrounded by the overpowering scent of sawdust. Will used it to haul lumber. Of course. Hannibal cracked the window and felt cool water spotted on his face. 

The soft tick of rain on the windshield became a deluge, fit to cleanse the Earth. They ran from the car to the house and still ended up soaked from hair to waist and halfway up their trousers from the crash and spatter of heavy drops against the ground. Lightning struck at distant hills. They watched from the doorway. Thunder shook the house. 

"You wanted to check for leaks," Hannibal said. 

"Yeah." Will slipped an arm around his waist and leaned into him, chin on his shoulder, eyes on the storm. "In a minute."

**Author's Note:**

> [emungere.tumblr.com](http://emungere.tumblr.com)


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